Police — To Be Tattooart
Essence
To Be Tattooart for Man is a 2017 Police skull-bottle cheapie with a clean blackcurrant, lavender and ambroxan profile. It is simple by design: fruity-fresh, aromatic, lightly sweet, easy to wear, and built around a tattooed blue skull that does much of the selling.
Scent Profile
Blackcurrant leads the scent. It gives the opening a tart, juicy freshness, supported by lemon verbena and a small cardamom spice. The effect is bright and immediately legible. Lavender and clary sage form the heart, turning the fruit into a clean aromatic scent rather than a sugary one. The lavender is especially important: it adds a familiar masculine grooming feel and makes the scent easy to understand. The base is modern tonka, ambroxan and amberwood. Tonka softens the finish; ambroxan and amberwood give it clean woody projection. The fragrance stays fairly linear, but that linearity is part of its usefulness.
Performance
Performance is solid for the price. Expect moderate projection at first, then a quieter skin scent with enough persistence for casual daily use. It is not a beast-mode fragrance, but it does not vanish instantly either.
Wearing Context
Tattooart works best as a casual spring and summer daily scent, though it can stretch into mild fall weather. It is office-safe, beginner-friendly and easy to share across gender lines despite masculine packaging. It is more useful as an inexpensive everyday bottle than as a signature or formal scent.
Comparisons & DNA
Versace Pour Homme Dylan Blue is the clearest modern reference. Tattooart is much simpler, cheaper and more blackcurrant-forward, with less polish and depth, but the fresh ambroxan-aromatic frame is related. Fierce-style fresh aromatics and youthful body-spray masculines are also part of the context. That is not an insult here; Tattooart is built to be easy, accessible and low-risk.
Reception
Reception is positive for a cheap daily scent. Wearers praise the blackcurrant freshness, easy wear, value and bottle. Criticism is equally clear: it can smell generic, inexpensive and unremarkable. The fair verdict is that Tattooart has dignity as a simple cheapie, not distinction as a serious composition.
Versions & Reformulation
No documented reformulation surfaced for the men’s Tattooart EDT. Do not confuse it with To Be Tattooart for Woman, which is a separate pink-skull EDP with a powdery floral-gourmand profile.
Acquisition Notes
Buy at discount pricing and verify the masculine blue-skull EDT. The full bottle is usually inexpensive enough that decants are rarely necessary. Counterfeit risk is low; the more common issue is accidentally buying the women’s version or expecting more complexity than the scent offers.
Notable Facts & Lore
- Tattooart belongs to Police’s long-running To Be skull-bottle family.
- The 2017 Tattooart pair used tattoo imagery and rose-decorated skull bottles.
- The masculine version uses a blue skull and a woody-aromatic EDT profile.
- The feminine version is a separate fragrance, not a variation of the same scent.
- The bottle is the most memorable and most praised part of the release.